


Glitter Me

by ShrapnelChan



Series: Annals of the Dragon Tamers [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Gender Issues, Gender Related, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Dande | Leon, References to Transphobia, Trans Dande | Leon, Trans Male Character, Transitioning, gender euphoria, some transphobic language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrapnelChan/pseuds/ShrapnelChan
Summary: “Lee? Did someone say something to you?”Leon sighs. “Just some stupid kids, it’s stupid –”“It’s not stupid if it’s important to you.”.Or, the author processes needlessly gendered things like nail polish by writing fanfic about it. See tags for warnings.
Relationships: Dande | Leon/Kibana | Raihan
Series: Annals of the Dragon Tamers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845859
Comments: 14
Kudos: 95





	1. so shine bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He smiles at Raihan, a small smile that is somehow still so bright it nearly is blinding in its sunniness.

The sour stench of nail polish hits Raihan the moment he walks in the door. He wrinkles his nose as he toes off his sneakers and pads quietly into the house. The telly is on, some dramatic reality show with the volume turned low, white noise to fill the space. Leon glances up from where he is sitting twisted like a pretzel in the armchair (the crappy one that both agree is ugly as sin but is so comfy to sink into for a nap that they keep it anyways), one hand holding his foot to keep it steady and the other hand cautiously holding the nail polish brush. He smiles at Raihan, a small smile that is somehow still so bright it nearly is blinding in its sunniness, then turns back to his task with a laser-like focus, tongue sticking out between his teeth as he daubs on the polish.

Raihan crosses the room to open the window, wider than the small sliver that Leon had already opened it to, and heads into the hall cabinet. He pads back to the armchair just as Leon starts cursing under his breath.

“How’s the pedi coming along?”

Leon sighs and slowly untwists his spine and tightly closes the bottle back up. “I definitely don’t have my mum’s talent for it.”

Raihan laughs and crosses back to the couch, cotton swabs and paper towels and polish remover in hand. “You say that every time. C’mere, sit with me.” He tugs the coffee table closer so he doesn’t have to stretch to reach it and sits cross-legged on the couch, and Leon moves over to join him, sitting across from him with his knees tucked up to his chest. Raihan holds out a hand and Leon passes him the bottle. Raihan takes his boyfriend's foot in hand and starts cleaning and touching up the shimmery red polish while Leon stretches back to the armchair to grab the telly remote and switch over to the fantasy show they’ve been watching.

* * *

They’re fourteen and seventeen, and Leon has finally managed to get a week away from sponsors and exhibitions and meetings and photo shoots to join his rival for a spot of training in the Wild Area. They race and spar, and eventually settle by the edge of the woods to make camp and stir up some curry. All too soon, Raihan’s curry bowl is empty. He pauses as he scoops up seconds, noticing that Leon’s bowl is still full. He hasn’t eaten a bite.

“….Lee? You alright?”

Leon is quiet for a moment, eyes staring unseeingly at his curry.

“I miss it, y’know?” Leon’s voice is quiet, with a longing that Raihan has never heard him speak with. He’s seen Leon determined, frustrated, joyous, angry, disappointed, surprised, but never this wistful, like he’s speaking of something that he wants but knows he will never have.

“Miss what?”

Leon sighs. “When I was little, Mum didn’t really say anything about it. Me n’ Hop were who we said we were, and that was that. Didn’t matter what we did or wore or played.” He looks up at Raihan, and Raihan is startled by just how exhausted his rival looks.

“It’s not like that in Wyndon. How you present is how people talk about you. It’s…” He sighs and looks back down at his bowl. Raihan scooches a bit closer on the log they’ve claimed as a bench, just close enough that his shoulder brushes Leon’s.

“When I was little, Mum would paint her nails every summer. And sometimes, I’d ask if she’d paint mine, too. She used to do it for a living, before she had me and Hop. She’s really good, can do all sorts of designs and patterns and all. It was just… nice. Something pretty, and we’d chat and sit outside together while the paint dried. She’s not that into Pokemon battles, that was more Dad’s thing, so it was always a nice way for us to bond and just sit together. So when I visited home last week, we sat and she painted our nails.”

He pauses, hesitating as he chooses his words carefully. Raihan listens patiently, and his eyes wander down to Leon’s nails. There is a tiny amount of polish left, at the base of the nail where the skin curves over the nailbed, shining and sparkling in the firelight.

“Lee? Did someone say something to you?”

Leon sighs. “Just some stupid kids, it’s stupid –”

“It’s not stupid if it’s important to you.”

Leon hesitates again. He slowly draws his knees close to his chest and sets the curry down on the ground by his feet. His arms encircle his knees and he grips his shins tight.

“…They said it was pansy girly shit. Said it was a shame the champion was a fuckin' pansy.”

There is a beat of silence between them, Leon lowering his head to his knees and Raihan staring into the campfire with shock and a cold fury brewing in his belly.

“Fuck them.”

Leon stops shrinking into a ball and turns his head to look at Raihan. Golden eyes reflect the firelight and look like liquid flame, the expression unreadable as Leon looks at his rival.

“They don’t know you, they don’t know anything about you.” Raihan tears his gaze away from the fire and meets Leon’s eyes. “Whatever makes you feel comfortable, do it. Wear it. Proudly. And if they say anything, me and Flygon and Charizard will give them what for.” He leans in closer to Leon and slings his arm around his shoulders, and the ends of Leon’s shaggy hair shift as Raihan’s sleeve brushes it. “You’re the strongest trainer in Galar, and none of the bullshit those kids spout will ever change that, or the fact that you get to decide who you are. Not them. Not your clothes. Not your nails. If those kids can’t see past their gendered bullshit, that’s their loss.”

Six months later, when they finally get the chance to run off into the Wild Area and train and camp out again, Leon’s hair is past his shoulders and his nails are tipped with glitter nail polish, and his smile is bright like the sun.

Raihan asks him about it, after they’ve spent the day battling and training and have finally made camp for the night, and Leon quietly mentions that he’s got the bottle tucked in his bag. Raihan holds out his hand to his rival and says, “Glitter me,” and Leon’s smile would put Solgaleo to shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I purposely left this open as to whether Leon is nonbinary or trans here because it doesn't really matter to the point of the story, does it? While I personally headcanon Leon as a trans man, I'm nonbinary femme and all of it still boils down to the fact that gendered clothing and accessories is BS and anyone of any identity should be able to enjoy it. Also, I sat on a cushion while I was writing this and ended up with an imprint of the cushion in my own nail polish :(


	2. snip-swish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you sure? Once I make that first cut, there’s no turning back.”

Leon is eight when he goes to train with Mustard.

Hop is barely one, and he misses his baby brother something terrible while he’s gone, but his mum and dad bring Hop to visit, and Mustard and Honey adore Hop, so he supposes it isn’t all bad. He wishes he could be there for Hop more, but Hop now has an even bigger family to support him, and so does Leon. And when Leon finally picks out the name “Leon,” Mustard and Honey and his mum and dad all support him fully.

Nothing changes, really. They call him Leon, now. Leon feels a swelling of pure joy in his chest when he overhears Mustard telling another student to “watch Leon, now, watch how he moves during this exercise,” and the pride has nothing to do with the praise of his skill.

He does, however, ask Honey to cut his hair for him. It’s long, it’s been growing out as long as he can remember, and it reaches down to his hip when he brushes it out in the morning. The smooth tresses turn to tangles, and then to knots throughout the long days at the dojo. It’s practical, he thinks to himself, and yet it’s also more than that. Other students don’t follow Mustard and Honey’s lead, sometimes, and it stings.

“Are you sure? Once I make that first cut, there’s no turning back.”

Leon bites his lip. He furrows his brow as he reflects on it one more time. He nods.

“I’m sure.”

“Alright, then. Hold still, now.”

The scissors shear off his long hair with a soft snip, and he feels lighter when Honey is finished, in more ways than one.

* * *

Leon is eleven when he becomes the Champion of Galar.

Hop is almost four, and their mum has taken Hop with her to Wyndon to see the final match. In all the celebrations afterward, Leon seizes his chance to slip away with his family to explore Wyndon. They meander through the shops, gazing into windows and ogling the displays. Hop is perched on Leon’s shoulders, tiny fists gripping tight to Leon’s hair.

“Lee, Lee, a princess!”

Leon winces at the tug on his hair and turns to face where Hop is pulling for him to look. In one of the windows, several Pokémon mannequins are dressed up in gowns and suits. They’re decadent, intricately embroidered with silk thread and with sparkling beads sewn into the designs. Leon looks up at one suit, a deep red one with long coattails and a fluffy, lacy cravat at the throat modelled by a Gardevoir mannequin, and he sighs appreciatively.

“Leeeeeee, you’re not looking at the princess!”

He looks to where Hop’s tiny finger is pointing, and the Petilil mannequin that Hop has bestowed his attention on is wearing a deep purple gown with soft pink floral embroidered insets. The sleeves are long, the same pink as the center of the dress, and are crisscrossed with bands of the same violet as the skirts. The silver trim glints in the afternoon sun, and Hop sighs as they look at the display.

“So pretty…”

Leon pauses for a moment, and thinks back to the sting of not-his-name being used by other kids at the dojo. He thinks back to summers spent with their mother carefully applying nail lacquer to his fingertips, the hot summer breeze drying the polish faster than they can drink their lemonade. He glances up at the red suit, then back down to the gown.

“Do you wanna try it on, Hopscotch?” Leon tilts his head back and looks straight up into his brother’s shining eyes. He grins broadly as Hop cheers.

“Yes! I wanna be a pretty princess!”

Leon laughs and they walk into the shop. The shopkeeper looks a little startled to see Leon there, and Leon supposes it’s understandable. He was just on the telly the day before, facing off against the region’s champion of seven years. However, he isn’t here today as the newly crowned Champion. He’s here as Leon from Postwick, Hop’s older brother. He smiles at the shopkeeper, and maneuvers Hop off his shoulders and back onto the ground.

“Excuse me, the purple dress in the window, is there any way my brother could try it on?”

The shopkeeper blinks at him for a moment, then smiles brightly and says, “Of course! Let’s see what sizes I have left.”

Hop steps out of the dressing room spinning and giggling, and he looks so happy that it makes Leon’s heart ache. He hasn’t seen Hop this happy in a long time, not since the winter holidays a year and a half prior when Hop and their parents had visited Leon on the Isle of Armor. Not since before their dad…

Leon shakes his head. He can’t go down that path, not right now. Right now, he’s with Hop and his mother, and Hop is still giggling even as he bumps dizzily into walls, and their mother is smiling again as she reaches out to steady the younger boy. The smile is warm in her eyes, and Leon thinks back to the half-smiles she’d given him through the screens at the PokéCenter video call booths, the smiles that never quite reached her eyes.

Leon wanders over to the counter, where the shopkeeper is keeping a half an eye on their group in between snippets of her magazine. He puts on his most polite smile. “How much for the dress?”

She tells him the amount. He ponders a moment, does some figures in his head based on what Chairman Rose had told him that morning. He holds out the shiny new card the Chairman had given him.

“There’s no returns, is that alright?”

Leon looks over to where Hop is still twirling around, reveling in the soft swish of the full skirts.

“That’s perfectly fine, thank you. We won’t need to return it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think I'd be adding to this piece, but here I am!! I was so completely overwhelmed by the support part one got, I suppose it was inevitable that the plot bunnies would strike again for this fic haha  
> come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://kiliofdurinsline.tumblr.com) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/ShrapnelChan_)  
> **edited chapter 2 on 29 August 2020, for age adjustment for series compliancy and added contact in notes


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